I awoke the next morning to light streaming in through the half-shut curtains. Trying to ignore the sour aftertaste of another weird dream, I went through to the kitchen to see Chris sitting in front of a pot of coffee.
‘Want some?’ he asked.
I nodded in reply.
‘When did you get here?’ I asked. ‘You should check out of the Hilton and move back in,’ I said.
‘I’m actually booked in to a modest wee place just off the Great Western Road. The Hilton thing is really taking the piss.’ He grinned. ‘Besides it gives me somewhere to mince off to when we have one of our rows.’
I laughed in recognition.
He grew sombre, pulled his iPad close to him, looked at it and then me. ‘After yesterday, where’s your head on continuing to look for Thomas?’
‘Not sure,’ I replied. ‘I keep worrying about poor Elsa, but then I go back to thinking that we need to do this.’
Chris looked at the table top, then into my eyes. ‘It kinda worries me how intense you’ve been about all this.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s like an obsession.’ His eyes strayed to a large wine glass and empty bottle by the side of the sink.
‘Rubbish,’ I replied trying to fight my irritation that he thought my drinking was a concern.
‘What is all this really about for you, John?’
‘I want to find out who my brother is and what happened to him? Is that so strange?’ How could I explain to Chris something that I had barely articulated to myself, that this was as much about me as it was about Thomas. I had spent so much of my adult life keeping an emotional distance from my family, frustrated by our dysfunction, that I found it easier to chase a possibility that I knew to be remote in the extreme, than to find the courage to face my thoughts and reestablish a relationship with those who were present.
‘Okay, because … I couldn’t sleep last night and went online … and I think I’ve found Robert Green,’ Chris said.